Murillo Gardens (24)

In 1911, King Alfonso XIII donated the lands that today have become the Murillo Gardens to the city. These ornamental gardens are south of the Santa Cruz neighbourhood and were designed by Juan Talavera. They used to be vegetable gardens that were part of the Real Alcázar. At the time, the gardens were named in honour of painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, who lived in a house on nearby Calle de Santa Teresa.

If you take a stroll through them, you’ll walk on the so-called paseo de Santa Catalina [Saint Catherine’s Walk], in memory of Catalina Ribera, a benefactress to the city who founded the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas, now home to the Andalusian Parliament.

You’ll find a monument here in honour of Christopher Columbus, also by Talavera, which has two spectacular stone columns that hold a bronze representation of the Santa Maria that carried Columbus to the New World in 1492. The work is crowned by a lion. Sevillians, in their typically playful way, used to accuse this lion of having eaten the statue of Columbus, which was never erected on the monument.